Thursday, February 16, 2012

This weekend only*, we’re giving you up to 30% off services available in the EverQuest marketplace. (Check out the list below to see the items that qualify for this sale)

Spend your three day weekend filling up your experience bar! From 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time on February 17, 2012 through 11:59 p.m.
Pacific Time on February 20, 2012, we'll dramatically increase
experience gains from mob kills to make your holiday weekend extra
special! Make sure you log in during Bonus Experience** and enjoy the
extra ding!

**Experience
awarded per kill will increased by up to 50%; please note that other
modifiers and caps will still be in place and will affect experience
gain normally. As a result, total experience gains may vary slightly,
depending on each individual's situation.

...As to not having dates and such announced this early, there are many
more constraints we face that are not transparent to the players.
Getting contracts signed, buy in from all internal and any external
partners that need to be involved, etc. We understand people's desire
for this information and will get it out as soon as we can.

After announcing our intention to sunset EverQuest (EQ) Mac in January, the response we received from the passionate EQ Mac community has resulted in our decision not to sunset the game at this time. Moving forward, we will be removing subscriptions from EQ Mac so that it will be a free game that everyone can continue to play and enjoy. We will look closely at Mac for our future titles.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Good news everyone! The restrictions limiting the number of anchors that can be placed will be lifted next patch.

For those who don't know, an anchor allows any character to port to their anchor once every 72 minutes. Anchors can be placed in your house or yard, or guild house or yard. Anchors and the device to port to them are sold by the Loyalty vendors for Loyalty Tokens (Crowns) .

In addition, Druids and Wizards get spells that allow them to port themselves or their group to their own anchors, as well as to TL group members to either the caster's or the member's anchors.

The biggest controversy surrounds the "Recruit-A-Friend" (RAF) program, which promised bonus experience "forever" if you or your friend created a linked account. With Free-to-Play (f2p), SOE announced that "forever" really means, "until we change our minds".

Since a number of people opened new accounts, spending hard earned money to do so, solely on the basis that they would gain the bonus experience, they are rather upset.

SOE's current response seems to be "caveat emptor" (let the buyer beware).

They also claim that code limitations prevent RAF from working with EQ once they enable f2p, even on paying accounts. They continue to refuse to refund money spent by those who were deceived into thinking "forever" means what dictionary.com claims.

In addition to the RAF issues, Piestro, EverQuest Community Manager, also commented on some other questions:

Game code and mechanics. We're still looking
into ways around the code limitations [preventing RAF from working]. Our goal is the middle of this
week for an update on the situation, even if it will be "still trying".

Veteran Rewards: Free and silver accounts will accrue time.

Fellowship
XP sharing: I'll defer to the devs on this one, I suspect yes to at
least join and share xp. I'd expect them to be able to create
fellowships as well but am not sure.

Loyalty: The maximum earning
rate (velocity) for free and silver accounts is capped at a
significantly lower value, but they will still accrue loyalty points.
Bags of plat will not be exploitable under the system though.

Character
and Server Transfers: As far as I am aware these will be allowed as
normal. It hasn't specifically come up in any meetings I've been a part
of.

*These statements are a reflection of my understanding at the
current time. During the final phases of implementation they may change.

Just a heads up.. The team has decided that
Suppressive Strike is too powerful to remain in game. So I'm going to be
removing/refunding the ability.

To fill the void/problem of monk
pulling casters, I'm going to be creating a new ability that effectively
works like the SK's Hate's Attraction, flinging the NPC to you. This
resolves a number of issues that came up with the way Suppressive Strike
works. Yes, I'm aware of the possible issues the fling can have and
does have with the SK ability, but this is really the only solution the
team came up with.

You can expect this for the February patch.

Later he amended his post with the following:

The HA type ability got held up due to other
things which took priority. Nothing I could do about it. Sometimes, when
your boss comes in and says "Do this.. now" you have to drop what
you're working on and do it.

The silence caused
the NPC to not be able to cast spells, but it didn't stop it from TRYING
to cast. So basically, it would just stand there and do nothing at all.
It was possible to completely stop an NPC from doing anything at all
while you beat on it mercilessly.

As for the cost, I completely
agree 15aa is too high. For march [sic], I'll refund this version of Distant Strike, and create a new one at a more reasonable cost. I'll also have the HA type ability in place. That one might cost a bit more

Tuesday, February 07, 2012

For some players, attempting to log into EQ gets a network error. In addition, they can not reach the SOE EverQuest forums.

Since some people have no problems, while others had the problem but it disappeared, while others still report being unable to log in, it appears that it is somehow related to SOE's network as it connects to various ISPs and/or geographical locations.

Bypassing the LaunchPad and patcher and directly logging in seems to enable everyone with a problem to log in.

How to bypass the LaunchPad and patcher:

Go to your EverQuest folder (if you aren't sure how to get there, the LaunchPad has a "gear" icon on the lower left side, press the gear to bring up the Advanced settings menu, then click on Open Game Directory) .

Find the file "eqgame.exe" (it may be listed as just "eqgame").

Make a shortcut to desktop for it by right clicking it, choosing Send to, and picking Desktop (create shortcut).

All EverQuest Live Servers will be coming down on Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 3:00 am US Pacific* for a Game Update. The servers are estimated to be unavailable for approximately 5 hours. Keep an eye on the EQ Players website and the forums for status updates and for news if additional downtime is needed.

Friday, February 03, 2012

*** Mercenaries ***
- Several changes have been made to Healer Mercenaries:
- After level 85, healer mercenaries no longer cast the Promised or
Elixir lines of spells. These spells may return in the future when
mercenaries learn to cast them more effectively.
- After level 75, healer mercenaries no longer cast Complete Heal.
- When at full health and mana, healer mercenaries will no longer sit.
- Healer mercenaries now respond more quickly when the main tank in their group enters combat.
- The power of the healer mercenaries' spells have been slightly increased.
- The Reactive stance has been modified to favor constantly casting direct heals without regard for mana cost.
- Note: At the moment, mercenaries have trouble healing players that
have high-HP regen buffs on them. Until this changes, avoid using
spells such as Splendrous Guardian, Spiritual Enrichment, or Promised
Renewal if you want your mercenary to heal you. [Bold added]

In addition, from Elegist, EQ Developer in the same thread:

In general, the healer mercenaries have trouble handling most regen
buffs or deferred heals. The code fix for this appears to be
relatively simple, but we have to make sure our changes don't adversely
affect other aspects of mercenary behavior. We are trying to put in a
fix for this by the time Free-to-Play goes live. Until then,
though, if you are having trouble getting your mercenaries to heal you,
try dropping some of your regen buffs or not using deferred heals. If you can, experiment with different healing spell combinations and post your findings. [Bold added]